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Republicans temporarily fixed it in 2010 with the passion of tea party insurgents. And in 2008, Democrats had enough populist fervor to make history but also, ironically, lift an academic elitist to the presidency.

The truth, however, is both parties are in big trouble because they are accurately seen as elitists by the broad swath of American voters who reside, figuratively if not also literally, between the Appalachians and the Sierra Nevada. Democrats are government elitists and Republicans are corporate elitists.

Too often, both parties think they know how to solve the average American’s problems better than she does. If you’re living in fly-over country, you might conclude your only choices are between two parties that are both overly centered on Washington and Wall Street.

Democrats’ elitism is naked — it comes in the form of a voracious appetite for more freedom-choking bureaucracy and behavioral mandates from Washington. GOP elitism is more symbolic, and proven by the nomination of sons of senators, governors, presidents and admirals for president. Since Ronald Reagan exited the stage, every GOP nominee but one (Bob Dole) has been the Son of Status. For six of seven elections, our Republican Party has put up somebody who inherited power from his dad. And in the seventh election, an aging American hero, Dole, epitomized the Washington elite by the time he made the ticket in 1996.

It’s difficult for voters to see the GOP as the bottom-up, grass-roots, entrepreneurial, bootstraps party when its nominees for president are anything but. Mitt Romney struggled for four years to convince skeptical voters he meant what he said, but as soon as voters saw his “47 percent” gaffe come from his lips, they accepted it instantly as verbal DNA reflecting a patrician core.